Children: a vital consumer group, yet we know so little about them. How can we persuade them to eat well, learn about food and enjoy cooking? The Institute of Grocery Distribution recently conducted research into their habits, preferences and wishes, and consumer analyst Angela Groves presents an exclusive insight.
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Children are an important group of consumers. Understanding their needs and wants will help industry develop the food and grocery offering now and for the future. It is a complex market; food for children has two target customer groups to satisfy: children and their parents. Adding to this complexity is the increasing focus on the children’s food market from a variety of sources and with particular emphasis on the issues driving healthy eating, promotions, children’s lifestyles and their apparent lack of cooking skills.
Market forces
Children need to be considered in the context of the family and society as a whole. It is not just the child’s needs that must be satisfied, but also the parents’, typically the mothers’. Many social trends in the UK impact upon children and their families, and particularly on how children learn about food. For example:
- The ‘nuclear family’ does not hold true for many households. Divorce and remarriage mean many children are growing up with the influence of two families on the food they eat, opinions they form, and the lives they lead.
- More women are taking less time, if any at all, away from work after childbirth. Childcare from an early age may mean children are learning about life, including food tastes and eating skills, from a broader range of people at a younger age.
- Inward migration and faster, more efficient travel means that children’s awareness and exposure to new foods is broadening and at a younger age.
- Family meals are reported to be declining in importance. Changing working patterns and more leisure activities can make it difficult for the whole family to eat at the same time.
Meal patterns, the food we buy and how we shop for food have all changed greatly in recent years. These social changes mean that children’s expectations and experience of food and meals are very different today from what their grandparents and parents experienced as children. Moreover, as children judge their own future by what they learn as a child it is likely that these trends will gain further momentum in the future.
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By GlobalDataIndustry responses
The UK food and grocery industry is actively responding to these changes. New product developments, such as innovative packaging formats, meet the needs of parents and children, offering a source of entertainment and enabling preparation by the child. Brand extensions have meant that industry is stretching the bounds of the traditional children’s food market, to include non-food items such as children’s toiletries, and web-based services that offer entertainment, education and that vital opportunity to bring the brand alive.
The UK food industry is extremely active in providing information about the food and grocery industry for children. A number of schemes are operated throughout the food supply chain that aim to support children when learning about food by providing packs for school use, for example Waitrose@School and MLC’s British Meat Education Service. Such programmes recognise that children are the food shoppers of the future and aim to build their knowledge and interest to turn children into discerning consumers in the future.
What do children think?
In the light of the rapidly evolving social environment in the UK and a continually expanding food and grocery offer, IGD set out to uncover what children think about food, cooking and meal times.
IGD in-house facilitators ran small discussion groups with children1. The discussions lasted between 30 to 45 minutes. Each group involved four to six children, who were already friends and happy in each other’s company. The children were between seven and nine years old.
A web-based quantitative survey followed the qualitative groups2. This tested some of the themes emerging from the discussion groups with 400 children. The children participating came from around the UK, and were again between seven and nine years old.
The key findings published in ‘Children’s food: market forces and industry responses’ cover three main areas:
- Sources of information: Nine out of ten children say that mums and dads are their main source of information about healthy eating.
- Family meals: Family meals still play an important role in today’s society.
- Cooking at home: When it comes to eating and cooking food, children want to be inspired and stimulated.
Health – parents still top
Contrary to popular belief, parents still hold the power when it comes to influencing their child’s choice of food. Nine in ten children (89%) said that they would ask their mother or father first if they wanted to find out if a food was healthy. In addition, 37% would ask their teacher and 31% thought TV programmes (excluding adverts) were a good way to learn about healthy foods.
When it came to trying a new healthy food, 65% of children said that including a free toy or game would have the most effect, with boys more likely than girls to respond to this. This might be something as simple as including free stickers for children in packs of fresh fruit. While parents were the top source for information, their influence waned when it came to encouraging children to eat a healthy, new food. The findings suggest that if the incentives offered with a product have the support of the parent then this could be a powerful influence in encouraging a child to eat a healthy food.
Source: Children’s Food: Market Forces and Industry Responses, IGD 2002
All the children had a general sense of what healthy meant, what healthy foods were and that healthy meant more than a person’s weight. They generally felt that a balanced diet was very important and that a food only became bad for a person if they ate too much of it. Whilst most seemed to eat at least one portion of fruit and vegetables a day, they seemed unsure of how much they should eat. Like many adults, they tended to see eating fruit and vegetables as a trade-off for eating foods they did not perceive to be healthy.
Family meals are still important
Most children frequently ate a family meal:
- 74% of children said their family mostly or always eat at the same time and
- 71% of children said their family mostly or always ate the same food.
These findings suggest that in the child’s eyes at least, family meals have a major role in family life. The majority of the young children participating said their family regularly had meals together, and indicated that that this was particularly important at weekends when the whole family made a special effort to eat together. If the same questions had been asked of older children different results may have been obtained.
- 34% eat together every day
- 40% eat at the same time most days
- Only 2% of children said that all members of the family usually eat at a different time.
- One in ten families only eat at the same time at a weekend.
Source: Children’s Food: Market Forces and Industry Responses, IGD 2002
Regional differences
The importance of family meals varied throughout the UK. More families ate together in the North than in the South.
- 82% of families in the North frequently eat together.
- 74% of families in Midlands eat together most or every day.
- 65% of children in the South said their family ate together most or every day.
The children IGD spoke to thought that their after school activities was the main reason stopping families eating together.
Novelty and inspiration important
Most children ate and enjoyed a broad range of foods including Chinese or Indian. They particularly liked foods offering some level of entertainment – “I like celery because you can peel it like cheese straws” – or those which made them feel grown-up.
The majority of children (82%) enjoy cooking at home, 41% would like to cook more while 18% were not interested.
Source: Children’s Food: Market Forces and Industry Responses, IGD, 2002
Children particularly liked helping to cook when it was a food that was unusual or a novelty, such as cooking a curry with dad, suggesting that stimulating their curiosity is important. Many of the children indicated the existence of traditional gender roles at home when it came to cooking weekday meals for the family. It seemed to be this that put them off cooking; if they cooked they wanted it to be exciting and enjoyable rather than the everyday task of preparing food for a family.
Angela Groves, consumer analyst at IGD, said: “Our findings suggest that stimulating initial interest and curiosity about food is imperative in creating and sustaining a child’s interest in cooking and healthy eating. This could be done through the ingredients used, or in how the final meal turns out. The current trend amongst adults of distinguishing between cooking as an everyday chore and for weekend entertainment seems set to continue as these children grow up. Today’s kids may not want to know how to boil an egg but they love cooking a curry with dad. There is a huge opportunity for industry to help parents by creating “cookery kits” for children, just as they have for adults with meal solutions.”
By Angela Groves, consumer analyst
Notes:
- Discussion groups were conducted between December 2001 and January 2002
- A representative sample of 400 children aged 7 to 9 years, conducted between the 10th and 14th January of 2002
This information comes from IGD’s report ‘Children’s food: market forces and industry responses’. For more information visit the website http://www.igd.com
